Scattered Wrecks
by the-Mad-Majesty-of-Muchness
Summary: After the Opera, Shilo is left alone and running on adrenaline until Graverobber comes along. He says she's in danger, but won't say how he knows this. She's not entirely sure she can trust him, but she also has no reason not to. Besides, everyone else is dead, so without him, who's going to help her pick up the pieces and move on?
1. Chapter 1

**AN: Okay, so I have been a fan of Repo! and TDC for a little over a year now, and I've been writing fics for my own enjoyment for that same amount of time, I've just never posted any of it. But, seeing how I have developed all these headcanons, written an e-mail to Terrance Zdunich, gotten a Graverobber hoodie from the website, dressed up as Shilo last Halloween and plan on doing Graves this year, have a folder absolutely FULL of fan art, screen caps, etc. on my computer, had a Repo! themed cake for my 17th birthday with lyrics from the song Seventeen on it, have a Grilo ask/RP blog on tumblr, and constantly sing Zydrate Anatomy in the shower, plus the fact that my mom is making me my own custom Repo! t-shirt, I finally decided that it's time for me to get with it and post something on here. **

**Just be aware that updates might be kind of infrequent because I have a busy life, multiple blogs to run on tumblr and on WordPress, another fan fic that I'm working on right now, plus what I'm hoping will be my debut book.**

**And dear GOD, I seriously hope that I manage to do justice to everything, because otherwise, I will have failed as a writer, as well as a person and a Repo!/TDC fan.**

**Also, the name of this fic comes from a quote in a little-known book that I've read three times called _Revolution _by Jennifer Donnelley, who took it from _Paracelsus _by Robert Browning. The quote is "...life was blotted out—not so completely/But scattered wrecks of it remain."**

**Okay, that's all, I disclaim, it all belongs to Zdunich and the Darrens, not me, all I own is the DVD, the soundtrack, my Shilo costume, and a hoodie with Graverobber on it.**

* * *

"Where are you taking me?" Shilo asked for the umpteenth time, and for the umpteenth time, she got no response from the man in the driver's seat of the limo, and for the umpteenth time, she didn't know what else to do besides wrap her arms more tightly around herself and try to make herself even smaller in an attempt to shrink back in her seat and become part of the upholstery, not even caring that she was probably getting it stained with blood in doing so.

How had so much gone so wrong in such a short amount of time?

Shilo was yanked out of her thoughts and musings by the sound of two gunshots—one right after the other, and too close to the car for comfort in her personal opinion. In practically the same instant that the second one rang out, the driver suddenly seemed to inexplicably lose control, and the limo jerked foward, sending both passengers forward. Shilo was still alert enough from the adrenaline that refused to take its leave of her system that she was able to catch herself on the seat in front of her, but the man driving, on the other hand, was sent jerking to the side hard enough that his head knocked against the glass of his window, effectively putting him unconscious.

She sat in terrified silence for a moment or so, holding her breath and looking around in a bit of a daze. Then, suddenly, she heard what sounded like a pair of feet jumping up onto the trunk of the limo, making her gasp. She looked up at the roof, shrinking back against the seat as the footsteps passed directly over her head, then squeezing her eyes shut as tightly as she could as the person reached the front of the car, trying to bunch herself up into a ball when she heard them jump from the roof to the hood. When another gunshot rang out in the night, this time right at the front of the limo, shattering the glass of the windshield, she flinched and, to keep herself from screaming, bit down on her lower lip until she tasted blood, which she didn't even give a second thought to. (After all, she was already covered in it; what difference could a little more possibly make by that point?)

There was a tinkling of glass along with a slight grunting and dull thump that came from the passenger side of the front seat, then someone let out an exhalation of breath, after which she heard a familiar voice say, "Relax, will ya? If I was gonna do somethin' to fuck you up or screw you over, I'd have done it already. You know, during one of the last _three times_ we've run into each other over the course of the night?"

And upon hearing this, her eyes snapped open as she untensed slightly and let out a small gasp at the realization that she recognized the voice that had spoken. Her eyes, upon opening, immediately landed on the sight of none other than the Graverobber himself, seated in the passenger seat up front and leaning there casually as if he'd been that way for the entire ride, slightly twisted around to look at her, one arm behind his head as if he were laying down about to take a nap instead of sitting in the front seat of a limo with a man out cold to his left and a seventeen-year-old girl covered in blood staring at him in a mixture of relief, surprise, confusion, and fright from the backseat.

After several moments had passed with each of them just sort of staring at the other like that, one corner of Graverobber's mouth twitched upwards slightly as he chuckled and just barely shook his head before twisting around more to look at her in a more straight-on way than he had been. "Seriously, kid, you can quit lookin' at me like that now," he said in a tone that, though perhaps trying not to, betrayed that he apparently found some sort of amusement or another in their current situation.

"This is the fourth time you've seen me tonight, I got you outta trouble the first two times, we both got somethin' out of it the last time, and I have yet to threaten, punch, kick, shove, slap, strip, rape, or murder you, haven't I? You've gotten out of it none the worse for wear through anything done on my part, relatively undamaged, twice with more knowledge about shit than you went into it with, possibly even all three times for all I know, and oh, look at that! You made it to the Opera you were so damn hell-bent on getting to, and you did so unscathed, still alive, still breathing, with nothing stolen, and most importantly, having managed to avoid becoming just another corpse for someone to score a harvest and make a profit from. Taking all that into consideration, I think it's a pretty safe bet that I'm not here to do bad shit to you anymore than I was those other three times. In fact, based on our history with one another, short though it may be, if I were you, I _might _even go so far as to say that maybe, just _maybe, _there may even be a possibility that I'm here to help you get your pale, scrawny little ass outta the danger zone. _Again. _Which reminds me, you're _welcome _for those other two times. Didn't get the chance to say it before, but you are very, _very _welcome for both of those times, which I say despite the lack of thanks because I'm sure that even though you haven't actually said it, I know you must be grateful for it on both accounts because ingratitude is, after all, a crime, or so they say, so I was taught in my youth, and so I believe to this very day."

Shilo sat blinking for a moment or so before she could find her voice and respond. "Th-Thanks," she stammered. "Yeah, no, thanks. For...For the graveyard and...you know, the—"  
"Kid. Relax. I was partway messing with you, alright? You don't have to thank me, I have my reasons for doing that shit, just like with everything else I do. You know why I'm here now, don'tchya?"

She thought for a moment, trying to come up with a reason that might explain his presence, but couldn't think of any, so she should her head in response. "Because," Graverobber said as he began digging around in the glovebox and checking in the driver's pockets, "you, darling, are being played in a manner similar to the boar against the ass even as we speak." At the look this got from her, he rolled his eyes and added, "It's a metaphor, kid, I grew up hearing my dad use it a lot, it's a reference to this old fable. Look, all it means is that you're basically being set up for an attack, and it's gonna come from this guy right here, believe it or not."

"How do you know that?"  
"I have my ways of finding things out."  
"How did you find me?"  
"Again, I have my ways."  
"Well...what do you want?"

He paused in his task of looking through the wallet he'd found on the driver to look at her, but didn't speak right away. "What makes you think I want something?" he said finally. Without waiting for a response, he took the credits he found in the wallet and shoved them into his coat pocket, then leaned across the driver and opened all the locks on the doors of the limo before opening the passenger side door and getting out, expecting that Shilo was going to do the same. When she didn't though, he went over to her door and opened it from the outside, making her jump a bit when he appeared there so suddenly. "You comin' or what, kid?" he asked.

"Where to?" she asked.  
"Someplace safe," he said as if it were the most obvious thing in the world. She raised an eyebrow. "With you?" she said. He rolled his eyes at her. "No," he said, "with Peter Pan and Tinkerbell. _Yes, _with me, you see anybody else around here? No, didn't think so, now come on, let's get outta here before—"

"How do I even know that I can trust you, huh?"  
"What, it's not good enough that I've already saved your life like three times in a single night?"  
"Yeah, and I appreciate it, okay, I do. Honest. Like, a lot. But...I know like nothing about you except what it is you do and that you have this weird knack for always somehow managing to show up right when I'm in some kind of trouble, plus one for getting into trouble and causing it, and...that's pretty much it other than the fact that you apparently are friends with Amber Sweet."

Graverobber sighed heavily and rolled his eyes again. "Alright, first off, I am not _friends _with Amber Sweet, got it? My relationship with her is about the exchange of goods, and that's it, cápiche? Pure business. I do not enjoy her or her presence, I merely tolerate and put up with her because she keeps comin' back and pays good, otherwise I'd have cut those ties a long time ago, she is a bitch and a pest, and sometimes, when I'm more pissed off at the world than I usually am, I like to let off some of that steam by fantasizing all the different ways I can think of to get away with murdering her skank ass. Hell, I came up with about sixty of 'em while I was hangin' upside down earlier before you showed up, my favorite of which probably has to be the one where I steal a knife from that stab-happy brother of hers and go all fuckin' Norman Bates on her while she's asleep, that way it looks like her stupid brother finally decided he'd had enough of her and killed her like he does to everyone else."

Shilo blinked. "Okay, that actually is a pretty smart plan," she said.  
"Thank you, it's definitely one of the best I've had in a while," Graverobber replied, giving a nod. "Now, as for all that other stuff, you wanna know about me? Alright, fine. I'll tell you about me. I'm a twenty-year-old guy that, yes, is perfectly aware that he looks like he's closer to thirty-something than twenty. My parents have been dead since I was about thirteen, I've been a Zydrate dealer since I was about fifteen, and for the two years between that and my parents dying while I was on the streets, I got by on pick-pocketing. I'm sometimes referred to as the King of the Glow, because that's what I am, I am the undisputed king of this trade, they don't call me _the _Graverobber for nothing. Despite what most people think, I'm not a hobo and I don't always sleep in dumpsters, though I will do it if I feel like I'm not gonna be getting home safely because of the GeneCops. Let's see, what else can I tell ya that ain't gonna put me at risk? I put the dye in my own hair, and the first time I did it, I only used one color, it was like this electric, Zydrate blue, and it was shitty as all hell, and I did it while my mom and dad were out one day and my brother and sister were too busy fighting to even remember I existed, I was going through this big rebellious phase. And, uh...I had to deal with all kinds of older sibling shit and harassment growing up because I'm the youngest of three."

There was a pause while she studied him in a sort of funny way. "What about your name?" she asked. He blinked, turning his head slightly as his eyebrows went up. "I beg your pardon?" he said incredulously. "Your name," Shilo repeated, her voice sounding a bit more confident than it had up until then. "What's your name? Your parents couldn't have just named you Graverobber, right?"  
"No," he said slowly, not entirely sure about what exactly she was trying to accomplish by doing this. She shrugged. "So," she said. "What'd they name you?"

He stood there for a moment or so, partway stooped over in front of the open car door with one hand resting on top of the roof and the other still on the door handle and his eyes closed as he absorbed her words, then let out a sudden laugh that made Shilo jump at the unexpectedness of it. "You think I'm dumb enough to go around announcing my name to just anybody?" he demanded.

"If I did that, the GeneCops'd be all over not only my ass, but my brother's, too, and my sister's if she was still on this damn island. The only thing you're possibly gonna get outta me on that subject is that I'm the only kid in my family without an N name, that's it. You ain't gettin' anything else from me on it, so don't bother asking again. If I decide I want you to have that information, then I'll be the one to bring it up, so unless and until that happens, forget about it, kid. I have my alias for a reason. Namely so the risk of my ass getting shot or arrested is lower than it would be otherwise. Now, if you don't have anymore questions, we really need to get going, alright? We're both in serious danger right now, you more than me, and I'm putting myself at risk just by standing here and looking at you. I'm trying to help you _again, _and we've been sitting here wasting time because you've got all these questions, so listen to me, you can either take the help I'm trying to give you and come with me where you'll be safe, or you can try and take care of yourself, it's your choice. If you pick going off on your own, though, then good luck surviving, 'cause from what I understand, you don't know jack shit, you'd ended up raped, murdered, or both in about two minutes. Like I said, though, your choice. I'm tired, I've had a long night, I'm goin' home, you can follow me if you want, it don't make a lick of difference to me, but if you don't, then hey, nice knowin' ya, kid, it was fun while it lasted."

He gave a two-fingered salute as he ended this speech, and then, without waiting for her to respond, he stood to his full height, straightened out his coat, then turned on his heel and began walking away. For a few moments, Shilo could only stare after him as her mind raced. Then, hardly realizing that she was even doing so, she slid out of the car, slammed the door, and then went hurrying after him, focusing on the brighter colors in his hair so she wouldn't lose sight of him as he walked ahead. "Hey!" she called. "Hey, Graverobber, wait up!"

He halted in his tracks and turned to look at her as she caught up with him. "Welcome aboard the S.S. Psycho, kid," he said.  
"I have a name, you know," Shilo said indignantly as he turned and started walking again, this time with her close on his heels. He smirked at her from the corner of his eyes. "I know," he said, and after a moment, he added, almost like an afterthought, "Shilo. You spell it with or without an H on the end?"

"Without," she said. He nodded and "mmm'd" somewhat thoughtfully, but said nothing in response, so they just continued on in silence, each of them lost in their own separate thoughts and musings over everything that had happened during the course of the night.

* * *

**WHOO, okay, I know I had some big paragraphs there, and I'm sorry, it's just that once I get going, I really get going, you know? Anyone who caught Graverobber's Aesop references gets points and a free hit of the Glow, I can't tell you much about them, but there are two of them, one at the end of a paragraph, the other more in the middle of a different and shorter paragraph, and these paragraphs have only about two or three lines between them. Okay, I guess I can also tell you that he makes these references while he's still sitting in the front seat before getting out and coming around to Shilo's car door. One is more obvious than the other, I'll admit that right now. Anyway, yes, there are going to be more Aesop references in this later on, I have a copy of an Aesop's Fables book, and one of the headcanons I have sort of combines Repo! and TDC through the use of Aesop, but you'll learn more about that in a later chapter, I promise. **

**Uh...so, I hope you enjoyed the first chapter, and please remember to review so I know how I did with it! AAAAnd everybody remember to Z up responsibly! :P**


	2. Chapter 2

**Okay, I was out of town for a couple days with no wifi, so I had plenty of time to work on this, and I'm quite proud of it, thank you very much. Um, let's see...I don't really have much to say, which is kind of a rarity for me, lol. Uh...so yeah, I own nothing, enjoy the chapter, and please remember to review, because it motivates the authoress. :)**

* * *

It was only as she got out of the shower that things really began to take their toll on Shilo. She didn't know how long she spent sitting on the floor up against the wall wrapped in a towel while her wig sat in the sink a few feet away and soaked, time having lost all meaning to her as soon as it all began to come crashing down on her. She didn't know how she had lasted this long. All she knew was that at some point after sinking to the floor, she heard Graverobber's voice calling to her from the other side of the bathroom door, but it sounded strange and far off, as if from a great distance, or through water. Maybe both. Either way, she could hardly make out the words. He'd said something about...more? Was that what he'd said? More what? Okay, wait, she may have been out of it, but Shilo knew, she _knew _that door had been closed just a second ago, just like she knew that she'd been alone in the bathroom until then.

_Wait, what?_

She felt something. Hands. Strong ones, calloused and warm and firm, and not, she faintly registered, completely unfamiliar. They were on either side of her face, cupping her cheeks and turning her head to the right. She squeezed her eyes shut and gulped in a lungful of air, then blinked until the face hovering in front of her came into focus. She knew that face, she could feel it in her gut, but she didn't know from where, or who it was, only that the blue eyes gazing into her own brown ones were impossible not to recognize, even though she couldn't come up with the name of the person they belonged to. She studied the person's face intently, and only after staring at those unmistakable eyes for several long moments did her brain manage to re-create the makeup that Graverobber had evidently removed at some point during the time she'd spent holed up in Bathroom Land. His lips were moving, so he had to be saying something, but Shilo had no idea what, because there was no sound coming from his mouth. Not any that she could hear.

Her vision blurred suddenly, and then she felt something hot and wet spilling down her cheeks. Whatever was happening, it wasn't entirely unlike what she experienced just before passing out when she missed her medicine, but at the same time, this was something completely new and different and..._terrifying. _And she had no idea what it was, or what would happen to her as a result of it, or how long it would last, or anything. "I can't breathe," she choked out. Graverobber nodded as if she was only telling him something he already knew, and then, the next thing she knew, he had lifted her off the bathroom floor and was carrying her out into the hallway, still wrapped in the towel, leaving her wig in the bathroom sink.

He took her into a dark room where all she could see was a network of thin cracks that spiderwebbed all over the ceiling, most of them emerging from the larger cracks that she managed to lock eyes on every so often. Then the room filled with light—_Is that a lamp? It...It has to be, it's too dim to be anything else and there's no ceiling lights in here.__—_and her view of things suddenly shifted so that his shoulder was in the bottom edge of her vision while directly in front of her and several feet away was a bare plaster wall and a door standing wide open. In the same amount of time it took her to absorb all of this, her view had shifted again, back to the ceiling with its cracks and occasional waterstains.

His voice came to her sounding muffled, like someone had forced her head into a sack and was holding her underwater and all at the same time there were cotton balls or wax plugs or something shoved into her ears and she was hearing him through the combination of all three. She could barely understand the words and couldn't fathom what he might possibly be saying to her, but his voice seemed to have risen suddenly in volume. Or maybe that was just her mind playing even more tricks on her. Somewhere in the back of her mind, she faintly registered that she was on a bed, which probably explained the shifts in her field of vision; it had been when he was setting her down on the mattress.

Then they were back, those hands on her face. His hands, she supposed. She couldn't catch her breath. It felt like there wasn't enough oxygen in the room, and while logic demanded she breathe as sparingly as possibly to preserve what there was, her instincts and the panicked feeling that was eating away at her from the inside out both made her want nothing more than to gulp in as much as she possibly could at once so she wouldn't feel so suffocated. His face was there again, hovering in the air above her, his hands still on either side of her face, his long hair falling over his shoulders, and maybe it was her half-delusional state of mind, maybe it was just the light or the angle, maybe it was two out of three, maybe it was all of the above, but she could have sworn that past the dyed streaks of color, for just a brief instant, she caught a glimpse of what looked like highlights, _natural _highlights of a warm golden-brown mixed in with his...ash brown? Was that what shade of brown his hair was? God, nothing made any sense anymore...

_Is this what Alice felt like? But...if I'm Alice, then...is Graverobber the Mad Hatter?...Or...Or maybe it's the other way around. Maybe Alice is me and the Hatter is Graverobber. Or would that be that _I'm _the Hatter and _Alice _is Graverobber?...W-Wait...I don't...What...? Why does he wear makeup, I wonder? Why would anyone wanna cover themselves up like that when they're so handsome?_

What _was_ that? What was that weird feeling in her ears, why did it feel like something was pressing that outer fold of skin into her eardrums, what was doing that? Wait, how...It was gone already, how could it be gone so fast? And why was Graverobber so close to her? His face was suddenly mere inches from hers, and she could feel the heat of his breath, the heat and oil of his skin, the grease in his hair, the odd stench of damp earth from the graveyards, of leather and sweat, and something strangely metallic that she knew she'd been overwhelmed with and had her nostrils assaulted by at some point or another in the very recent past, but she couldn't figure out when or where that had happened, and was therefore unable to figure out what the scent was.

Then the strange feeling in her ears had vanished, Graverobber had backed up a bit so that he wasn't quite so close anymore, and he was staring down at her with a creased brow and his lips moving. After a few seconds or so, sound began to issue forth from those lips, and then the sound gradually became broken and fractured syllables, which then began to separate into slurred-together words until finally, she could understand what he was saying and hear each word the way it was meant to sound.

"—shock, I need you to look at me and relax, just stay calm, alright, I need to go get something from another room, I'm just going down the hall, I'll be right back, alright, stay here." So saying, he turned and hurried the less-than-ten-foot distance down the hall from the guest bedroom and his own room, and just as he'd expected, she began crying out for him frantically almost as soon as he left the room, begging him through her sobs to come back, pleading with him not to abandon her, screaming about how she was scared to die and wasn't ready to yet and please, for God's sake, don't just leave her alone there to die all by herself. He grabbed what he needed quickly, then ran back to the guest room, getting to her just as she started hyperventilating.

The towel had, in the midst of her panic, slipped off almost entirely, leaving most of her small, pale, slender little body exposed.

Graverobber glanced down at the t-shirt and sweatpants clutched in his hand, having gotten them for this exact reason. _Now, how exactly am I gonna help her get these on without looking at anything I'm not supposed to look at...? _Finally, he went and sat down on the bed, keeping his gaze towards the ceiling. "Arms up, kid," he said, and after a moment, he could see her hands in the lower edge of his vision hovering in the air. He slipped the shirt onto her, and then somehow managed just by feel alone to get the pants onto her legs, despite the fact that she wasn't exactly keeping them very still at the moment. Once he'd gotten her covered up, he threw the towel onto the ground and got onto his knees beside Shilo on the mattress, having to fight a bit before he succeeded in pinning down her flailing limbs.

"No, don't!" she screamed, and he froze. "Don't, please, don't!"  
"Calm down, kid," he said in a low voice, "I'm not gonna hurt you."

"Help! Daddy!"  
"Daddy's gone."  
"No, I want my daddy!"  
"Kid. Daddy's gone, okay?"  
"No! Get him back, I want him back!"  
"I know you do, but he's not coming back. I'm what's available."

She let out a loud sob. It was followed by another, and then another, until they were wracking her entire frame and she was having trouble breathing past them. He laid down on his side next to her and gathered her up in his arms, holding her against himself and letting her cry. After a while, her sobs began to grow softer and less frequent. "Why are you being so nice to me?" she asked quietly, her voice muffled by the fabric of his shirt. Graverobber's gaze flickered down to her for a brief instant, then moved back up as he sighed. "Because," he said, "you're a good kid. You don't deserve to be left on the streets just because you don't have anywhere you can go or anybody to look out for you."

For a moment, they were both silent. Then, he felt her hand work its way up between their bodies and stop at her breastbone, and he wondered what she was doing. She gasped and abruptly jerked into a sitting position, practically yanking herself out of his arms in the process. "My mom's necklace," she said. When she looked at him, he could see that her eyes were still bloodshot from crying, but she seemed to have cried herself out for the moment, because they also looked rather dry. He sat up, pushing some hair out of his eyes and running his fingers through it. "What was that?" he asked.

"My mom's necklace," she repeated, "where is it?"  
"I dunno," he said, "it's probably still in the bathroom with your wig. Stay here, I'll go look."  
"Can you get my wig out of the sink, too? It's real hair, so you can dry it off with a towel."

Graverobber didn't respond, only nodded as he got up and went back to the tiny bathroom at the end of the hall. He had to look around a bit, but he finally managed to locate the necklace hanging by its chain from the knob on the inner side of the door, and then he took the wig out of the sink and drained the water, which was stained pink from the blood that had washed out. After drying it off as best he could with a towel, he took both the wig and the necklace back down the hall, only to find Shilo standing in the bedroom examining the contents of the closet, which he supposed was partly his fault since the doors on it hadn't been closed.

He cleared his throat to get her attention, and she turned. "Thanks," she said. She took them from him, slipping the necklace on over her head and then putting the wig on and adjusting it slightly. "Whose clothes are those?" she asked, pointing at the closet. "They don't really look like they'd be yours. I mean, no offense, but you don't exactly seem like the flannel kind of guy."

"Yeah, they're not mine, they're my brother's," he said as he went and shut the closet doors. "He stays with me sometimes, and this is his room when he does. Guy can't hold a job or an apartment for more than a couple months at a time, so he stays with me while he's between places. Just keeps some of his clothes here to make it more...convenient."

"What's your brother like?"  
"Crazy and stupid."  
"Didn't you also say you have a sister?"  
"Yeah."  
"What's she like?"  
"Gone."  
"Gone?"

"Dropped off the face of the earth after my mom's funeral, haven't seen or heard from her since, doubt we ever will again. It was seven whole years ago. I'm not sure if she's even still alive. And before you ask, my parents were...One was a drunk, the other tried too hard. My childhood wasn't fun, kid, I don't like to talk about it that much."

For a moment, they just stood there in silence, Shilo feeling slightly awkward. Finally, Graverobber jerked a thumb over his shoulder. "You hungry?" he asked. "I've got leftover Chinese from last night in the fridge, we can heat some up and put on a movie or something. I've got a ton of stuff from before the NOS epidemics hit and the world got shot to all hell. You ever heard of a guy named Tim Burton?"

Shilo looked up at him, a grin on her face. "Are you kidding me,_ Beetlejuice_ is only like my favorite movie ever!"  
Graverobber held up his hand, and Shilo high-fived him. "I got that one," he said. "Chinese and _Beetlejuice._ I can make that happen. Follow."  
So she followed him downstairs and through a small living room and into an even smaller kitchen. "What's in those two doors we walked past?" Shilo asked, watching as Graverobber opened the fridge and looked around.

"Huh? Oh. The one at the bottom of the stairs is just a closet, the other one's the front door," he said, and then emerged from behind the fridge door holding two cartons that had clearly come from a Chinese restaurant. "Orange chicken," he said, "or chow mein?"

"What's chow mein?"  
"Type of noodles."  
"Oh. Then...I guess chow mein."

Graverobber nodded, then set the cartons down on the counter. Shilo sat down at the small table and watched as he dumped the noodles into a bowl and the chicken onto a plate, then stuck the bowl in the microwave. "So," she said while they waited for it to beep, "if you won't tell me your name...can I guess?"

He laughed. "You can try!" he said. "There's a billion names in the world, kid, we'll both be dead by the time you get it! But hey, to quote my brother, whatever floats your goat."  
"Okay, so you already told me that it doesn't start with an N, right?"  
"That is correct. And just so you know, you're guessing twice."

"I beg your pardon?"  
"You wanna know my first name, right?"  
"Right..."  
"I don't go by my first name."  
"You don't?"  
"No."  
"Then what do you go by?"  
"My middle name."  
"Why?"

He shrugged as he brought the food over to the table and put the bowl of noodles in front of her, then sat down with the chicken. "I don't like my first name very much," he said simply.

"Okay, so...I'll guess your first name, then your middle name?"  
"Whatever you want, kid."

Shilo thought for several moments, chewing her chow mein thoughtfully.

"Zachary," she said.  
"Wrong."  
"Darren."  
"Nope."  
"Christian."  
"Uh-huh."  
"Cody."  
"Try again."  
"Michael."  
"No."  
"Jacob."  
He shook his head.

"Uh...Gavin."  
"Kid, just give up."  
"No! You know my—"

He cut her off with a tilted head and raised eyebrows as if to say, _Really? _  
"Kid," he said, "everyone in the city knows your name now. It's not much of an accomplishment, believe me."  
"God, I hate you so much right now, you know that?"  
"You seem to be feeling better. That's good."  
"You...energize me in some weird way I can't describe."  
"How're the noodles?"  
"Good. What are these things mixed in with them?"  
"Onions. They put 'em in to give the noodles more flavor."  
"Seriously, though, what's your brother like?"

Graverobber sighed, letting his head droop for a moment to add drama. Then he looked up at her with a look on his face that was a mixture of amusement and what looked like tiredness, laughing lightly as he shook his head. "I can't tell you," he said, "just like I can't tell you my name. It could put him in danger, and that's not a chance I'm going to take. I can't, kid, I just...can't."

"Who exactly do you think I'm going to go and tell this stuff to, anyway?" Shilo asked. "You're like the only person in the city that I even know, who am I going to repeat anything to? You said before that you're the only kid without an N name in your family, so his name starts with N, right?"

"Yeah, it does."  
"Is he named Nick?"  
"Nicholas, but we call him Nick. How'd you figure that out so fast?"  
"It's just the first guy name I thought of that starts with an N, that's all."

For several moments, they just sat there staring each other down across the table until finally, Graverobber sighed.  
"Alright," he said, "you wanna know about my big brother Nicky? Listen up, I'll tell you about Nicky. Nicholas is the most ADHD person I've ever met in my life, and because of it, he has trouble keeping a job held down, so he's always bouncing around between employment and between living places. When he doesn't have a place to stay, he either crashes with me or with our godsister. Technically speaking, I shouldn't even be calling him my brother because he's not, he's my half-brother. My dad and one of his girlfriends he had before he met my mom got wasted at a party one time, and Nick is the result. He was raised by his mom and my sister, mom, and I knew nothing about him until one day, when I'm about, eh...I guess I would've had to be around six or seven at the time...He shows up out of the blue on our doorstep asking if his dad was there, and we were so confused, and then all of a sudden, Dad comes in asking what's going on, he sees Nick, and pulls him inside. Nobody knew what the hell was happening. All we knew was that there was some weird kid yelling, 'Dad!' at _my _dad, who is suddenly acting all guilty and nervous and shit. So after we've cleared things up about who this kid is, we find out from him that apparently, his mom had gotten killed in a mugging, so he decided he was gonna go looking for his dad. Nick was ten at the time this happened, by the way, my sister was nine. So anyway, my mom ended up legally adopting Nick as her own, and Nick, who had previously used his mom's last name, started hyphenating that with Dad's, and over time, he ended up cutting out his mom's name altogether, and now he just uses Dad's name, same as me. And that, Shilo, is the story of my brother Nick."

He got up and disappeared, then came back a few minutes later with something in his hand, which he passed over to Shilo. "That's us when we were teenagers," he said. "I'm on the left, Nick's on the right, and those two girls with us are my sister and our godsister. My sister's the one with the deadpan bitch look on her face. That was taken when I was sixteen."

"He looks so much like you," she said.  
"Yeah. We don't look quite as similar now that we're older. His hair stayed about the same color, mine got lighter, our jaws kind of went different directions with their shape...It's funny. He has long hair in that picture and mine was only to my shoulders. Now it's the other way around. He ended up looking more like Dad than I did, though I'm the one that ended up with the blue eyes. Nick got his eyes from his mom, I think. I never met her. Heard she was a nice lady, though."

"Dad always said that I looked just like my mom."  
"You never met your mom, did you?"  
"No, she died when I was born."  
"That sucks, I'm sorry."  
"Don't be. Can't miss her when I never knew her."

Graverobber shrugged in a "yeah-I-guess-that's-true" kind of way. "So what about you?" he asked.

"What about me?" she replied.  
"What's your life been like, locked away like Rapunzel for seventeen years?"  
She cast her gaze down, giving a faint smile as she shrugged slightly. "Not that interesting," she said. However, now that she'd managed to get something out of him, Graverobber was determined to get something out of her in return. So he leaned forward across the table, putting a hand under chin and lifting her head so she was looking at him. They stayed that way for a bit, just watching each other, a small grin on Shilo's face, until she finally couldn't help but let out a small giggle. Moving his hand out from under her chin, she shrugged again.

"I have a bug collection," she said. "I'm...I guess you could say 'culturally educated.' I know all these TV shows and movies and books and songs and stuff from before the NOS epidemics. I grew up pretty much idolizing Blind Mag, and I found out just hours before the Opera that she was apparently my mom's best friend and my godmother, but my dad told her I died with my mom for some reason. Anyway...I...I don't know what else there is that I can tell you, really, I mean..." She trailed off into another shrug. Graverobber sat there gazing at her for a moment, then got up suddenly, left again, and then came back, this time with two pads of paper and two pens. When he sat back down, he gave one of each to Shilo and kept the other set for himself.

"I have an idea," he said. "What if we each make a list of facts about ourselves? Just random pieces of trivia, whatever we can think of. But here's the catch—only some of them will be true. The rest will either be lies or partial truths. Think of it sort of like a game, if you will. So we'll make these lists, then trade 'em, and whenever the hell we feel like it, we can whip these things out, read something off of them, and the other one has to say if it's true or not. If it is, then the one who read off will have to tell something off of their list that's true. If it's a lie, the other person has to say something that _is_ true, and if it's only a partial truth, they have to tell the full truth, and if there's a story behind it, they have to tell the story. How's that? This way, we get to know each other without either of us constantly pestering the other about certain stuff, plus maybe have a little fun in the process."

"Alright," Shilo said, "sure. Let's do it. How long does the list have to be?"  
"However long you want, just put as much on there as you can come up with. If it ends up being more than one page, that's fine, I've got a stapler around here somewhere."  
So for the next half hour or so, the two of them just sat there at the kitchen table, writing down their lists. By the time they finished, they both had two pages, each with writing on the back of it as well as the front. "Okay," Graverobber said once everything was stapled and they'd traded, "I'll let you do the honors. Pick anything you want off of there and I'll tell you if it's true or not."

"Okay, um...You're ambidextrous?"  
"True."

"What? No you're not, shut up."  
"I am so, you want me to prove it to you?"

"Yes."  
"Fine, watch this."

He grabbed his pad of paper and pen again, holding the latter in his right hand, which, Shilo remembered, was the same one he'd been using while making his list. She watched as he wrote out the words _Amber Sweet is the Queen Bitch. _Then, switching the pen over to his left hand, he wrote the exact same thing directly underneath it, then dropped the pen on the table and leaned back in his chair as Shilo grabbed the pad of paper and examined both lines. "Holy shit, they're identical," she said after a minute.

"Told you," Graverobber said, shrugging casually. "Yeah," he added, "I can do just about everything equally when it comes to my hands. I mean, I prefer my right over my left because that's the one I used when I was learning to write as a kid, so it's a tiny bit stronger, but if and when I ever need to, I can use my left hand just as easily. Okay, that one was true, so now you have to tell me one of the true ones from your list."

"I'm named after my mom."  
"Are you really?"  
"Yeah, my middle name, Marni."  
"Shilo Marni Wallace...That's pretty."

"Thanks. Hey, I think maybe after we read these and stuff, we should cross them off so we don't accidentally read the same ones again."  
"You know what, that's probably a good idea. Yeah, let's do that. Nice thinkin' there, kid."

"Okay, uh...The girl who taught you how to be a graverobber has _purple hair?"_  
"That one's a partial truth, her hair is actually pink. And no, it's not dyed, it was surgery. My turn. You have a—You do not have a black widow spider in your collection, quit bullshitting."

"Okay, okay, fine, you caught me, that one's a lie! But I _do _have a crescent comb-foot, and those are a member of the same family as black widows, which is the _Theridiidae _family. It's the family that all _Lactrodectus _spiders belong to, _Lactrodectus _being the widow spiders. Um...you've got a thing for roaches, really?"

"That one might be more true than anything else on that list, yes. I don't know jack shit about spiders, but you come to me with a question about cockroaches, and I will take it as an opportunity to yap your ear off about the little guys, I find them absolutely fascinating and I have no idea why, I just do. So when I was a kid, I started cramming my head full of all these roach factoids and trivia and stuff. Like, for example, you know how they say that the roaches will inherit the earth if we get stupid enough to kill ourselves off in a nuclear war? The lethal dose of radiation for a roach is like six to fifteen times higher than that of a human, but compared to, say, a fruit fly, they're actually not that radiation resistant. The reason they can survive so much radiation is because of the way their cell cycle works. Apparently, cells are most vulnerable to radiation while they're dividing, and for humans, that's like twenty-four-seven, but not with roaches. Roach cells only divide once each time they molt, and for a juvenile, that's maybe once a week at the most. So since it's pretty much impossible for every roach on earth to be molting at the exact same time, a lot of them would be totally unaffected by a sudden burst of radioactivity, but the lingering fallout would still be bad for them."

"How do they survive without a head?"  
"Oh, that's easy. It's because the spiracles that the tracheae attach to don't include the head. You know, one time, they did this experiment where they submerged some roaches underwater for like an hour, and when they took 'em out, the roaches were able to recover. They're pretty cool, I mean, they can survive on nothing but the glue on the back of a postage stamp and stay active for like a month without food. And the eggs, you know how they hatch? It's a result of the combined pressure of hatchlings all gulping air at the same time. Some people think there are albino roaches, but that's not true. See, for a few hours or so after they hatch, the nymphs are white until their bodies harden and darken. People see the nymphs, and they think it's an albino roach, which leads to the belief spreading, but it's total bullshit, trust me. Okay, so now we got that out of the way, you have to tell me one of your true things."

"One of my wigs is Zydrate blue."  
"What I wouldn't give to see you wear that! Okay, um...your favorite book is _The Outsiders, _is that one true?"  
"It's one of my favorite books, but not my absolute favorite. My absolute favorite is a little known book that was published in 2010 called _Revolution _by a woman named Jennifer Donnelly. It's historical fiction, and it's really cool because it's actually told from the point of view of a girl living in 2010, and she finds the diary of this girl that lived during the French Revolution, and so it sort of switches back and forth between them as she's reading the diary, and then one day, boom, Andi, the girl from 2010, is suddenly in Alex's time period to finish what Alex started. It's really good, it's got some great quotes and stuff in it, and my favorite one is probably the one that's the very last thing in the book. It says, 'It goes on, this world, stupid and brutal. But I do not. _I _do not.' And then that's it, that's the end of the book. And, like, Andi's brother Truman was killed by some crazy guy like two years before the book takes place, and she suffers from like insane depression, and she even thinks about suicide several times, and she actually tries to get up to the top of the Eiffel Tower at one point so she can...you know...Anyway, she doesn't manage to do it, thankfully, the elevator was like full or something, and it was the last one going up that day, so...You know...now that I think about it...there's this one quote that kind of reminds me a little bit of you. I think it fits what I've seen of you so far. It's from Alex's diary."

"What is it?"  
"Well, to understand part of it, you have to hear another quote from the diary first, which is, 'They call me a woman now, and mad. Bonaparte...laughingly says that I, being a lunatic, will simply walk into the Seine one night and drown myself like mad Ophelia. How convenient.' But the quote that reminds me of you is, 'I will not stop. For mad I may be, but I will never be convenient.'"

"That sounds about right to me," Graverobber said, leaning back in his chair and putting his hands behind his head. "I'm totally nuts, my whole family is, each in our own messed up way."

"Amade."  
"What?"  
"Amade. It's a name."  
"Oh, Christ, are we back on that again? No, my name is not Amade!"

"Dante."  
"No."  
"Mitchell."  
"No."  
"Dillon."  
"No."  
"Joseph."  
"No."  
"Jasper."  
"No."  
"Garrett."  
"No."  
"Emmett."  
"No."  
"James."  
"No."  
"Tyler."  
"No, but now you're on the right track."

"How so?"  
"With the T."

"Trevor."  
"No."  
"Timothy."  
"No."  
"Thomas."  
"No."  
"Travis."  
"No."  
"Tristan."  
"No."  
"Trace."  
"Trace?"  
"It can be a name! I read a book once with a character named Trace!"  
"No."  
"Tony."  
"That's a nickname for Anthony, it's not an actual T name by itself."  
"It can be sometimes."  
"Either way, no. And neither of them is Anthony, either."  
"Tracy."  
"That's a girl's name!"  
"It can be a guy's name, too!"  
"Well, it sure as hell ain't _my _name!"  
"Those are all the T names I can think of, if it's not any of them, what is it?!"

"You're not thinking dorky enough."  
_"Dorky _enough?"  
"You heard me."  
"You're calling your own name dorky?"  
"I told you I didn't like my first name, didn't I?"  
"Give me a hint. Please. I'm begging you."  
"First name. Double letters in there somewhere."

"Tanner."  
"No, but there is an R and an N in there."

Shilo sighed heavily, then grabbed her pen and pad of paper. "What are you doing?" Graverobber asked. When she was done writing, she turned it around for him to see. The only thing she'd put on the page was a capital T. "Here's what I know about your first name so far," she said. "Let's make a compromise. How about you tell me all the letters in your name in whatever order you want, and I'll write them down at the top of the page, then try to unscramble them and figure it out, and for your middle name, just tell me the first letter, and I'll guess all the names I can think of that start with it, okay? Does that work for you?"

"Fine. But I'm not telling you how many of each letter there is, if there's more than one of it, I'll say 'at least one,' but you have to figure out how many."  
"Alright, deal. Start spilling."

"At least one R, and at least one E. A. C. N. And that's it."

"Okay, let's see...Well, it _could _spell out Trance with multiple Rs and Es, but I'm assuming your parents didn't name you Trance."  
"You would be correct in that assumption."  
"Alright, then let's see what else we can come up with here..."

Graverobber sat back casually and observed while Shilo thought for the next several moments, her brow furrowed up in thought. He couldn't help but notice how she got this little crease right between her eyes when she was like that, and he thought it was cute. He was broken out of his thoughts by the sound of her voice suddenly. He blinked and looked at her. "I'm sorry, what?" he asked.

"Terrance," she said. "Once you add an extra R and E, it spells out Terrance."  
"And lo, our heroine finds success!"  
"Your name is Terrance? Really? It...doesn't really..."  
"I know, I know, that's part of why I choose not to go by it. Now, we made a deal, and I believe part of that was for me to give you the first letter of my middle name. It's A."

"I already know it's not Anthony...Andrew?"  
"No, but ironically enough, that was my dad's name."

"Antonio."  
"No."  
"Abraham."  
"No."  
"Aidan."  
"No."  
"Adrian."  
"No."  
"Austin."  
"No."  
"Adam."  
"No."  
"Alan."  
"Which spelling?"  
"Um, I dunno, why? Oh my God, that's it, isn't it?!"  
"I dunno, it depends on how you're spelling it!"  
"A-L-A-N!"  
He made a buzzer sound. "Wrong!"  
"A-L-L-A-N!"  
"God dammit!"  
"Ha, I figured it out!"  
"You got lucky, kid!"  
"I still figured it out!"

"Fine, you got me! I'm named after my grandfather, he was named after Edgar Allan Poe, my great-grandmother was really into pre-NOS literature, especially the classics. Poe was one of her favorites, so my grandfather was named after him, and my great-uncle was named Dante. God dammit, why are you so smart?! Okay, Little Miss Genius over there, then tell me what's gonna happen to you when your body starts to register the lack of meds!"  
"That's easy. I'll have one of my episodes."

For the second time within the last five minutes, he made a buzzer sound, giving her two thumbs down. "Wrong! Daddy had you on drugs, sweetheart, and drugs mean withdrawals!"  
"Whatever, quit making shit up!" she countered. He didn't reply, his face growing serious as he looked at her from across the table. After a moment of staring at him, her smile began to fade. "Oh my God, you're serious, aren't you?" she said. He didn't even nod. He didn't have to. His expression alone was enough. "How soon?" she demanded, and he shrugged.

"Depends on what he was giving you," he said. "Whatever it was, though, your body's been getting a regular intake of it for seventeen years, and now that intake has stopped. Your body hasn't registered that fact yet, but it will sooner or later. It's not a question of _if, _it's a question of _when. _Once your body figures out it's not getting that intake anymore, it'll have to adjust to the change, just like with an addict who's trying to get clean. You stick a needle in your arm and shoot meth into your veins for however many years in a row and then suddenly stop because you're trying to quit, your system's gotta readjust to functioning without that stuff as a contributing factor in what you do and how you do it, right? Same thing with crack, weed, Zydrate, or whatever else, even, in some cases, prescription drugs. And that includes whatever your dad was putting into your blood. So as much as I hate to say it, Shilo, yes. You _are _going to be experiencing withdrawals starting at some point probably within the next couple weeks or so."

There was silence for a few minutes or so as she let all of this sink in. "So...what exactly do they involve, how long do they last?"  
"Well, they usually last a few hours, at least, and part of it depends on the drug. When they start also depends on the drug, usually no less than about twelve hours after taking the final dose, I think. And I've heard of...aftershocks, so to speak, happening up to three weeks after taking that last dose, but again, I think it depends on the drug. As for what they involve, that's something else that depends on the drug. Typically it's things like fever, shaking, sweating, nausea and vomiting, headaches that often get bad enough to qualify as migraines, and sometimes hallucinations, seizures, or both. Like I said though, a lot of it depends on the drug that was being taken. And I'm assuming you don't have any idea what he was giving you, am I right?"

She shook her head, and he sighed. "Well," he said, "then I guess we'll just have to wait and see what happens when the time comes, won't we?"  
"How do you know so much about this stuff? It almost sounds like you're speaking from personal experience or something."

"To some degree, I am. I mean, I myself have never gone through withdrawals, but you have to remember, I live on the streets part-time, and it was full-time when I was younger. I've seen more than my fair share of shit. My godsister likes to say that I'm old for my age in a lot of ways. And I guess she's right, at least to some extent. Not only that, but my dad had a bottle addiction. Took him until I was about nine, but he finally decided to quit because he wanted to be around to see us grow up. He went through alcohol withdrawals. I didn't even know there was such a thing until it happened to him. Freaked me out when it started happening, so I got online to see if I could find out what it was exactly that was happening, and I ended up learning about the drug version of it, too." He laughed without humor. "It didn't work," he said. "My dad quitting, I mean. By that point, it was too late, the damage was done. He died of liver failure when I was twelve, and a year later, my mom's epilepsy popped up and she hit her head on something during the seizure. In the end, it was the internal bleeding caused by the blunt force head trauma that did her in. I've been on my own except for Nick and my godsister ever since."

"What about your sister?"  
"Like I said earlier, she disappeared after Mom's funeral. Probably left the island and went to the mainland. That'd be my guess. I always liked my godsister better, anyway. Natalie was always such a megabitch, but Jem...Jem's the opposite. I mean, she's a black belt in a bunch of different martial arts, so she can totally kick a person's ass if she has to, and she won't hesitate to do it if she feels like she has no other choice, but she'd prefer to avoid it when she can. She's...She's the glue that's held the family together ever since my parents and godparents died. Works her ass off doing the graveyard shift—please excuse the pun—at some obscure bar or something where someone grabs her ass every time she turns around. Works minimum wage and lives in a crappy little apartment near the harbor. She just...deserves so much better than what she's got going for her right now, you know? She deserves to be an actress like she wants to be, not a minimum wage waitress. She's so talented, and she's absolutely in love with Shakespeare. She'd make the best damn Juliet this world has ever seen."

For several moments, they were both silent. Then, Graverobber—Terrance. Allan. Whichever he wanted her to call him now that she knew his name—stood up and took her empty bowl, putting it on top of his empty plate, then dropping them in the sink and grabbing the photo of himself, his siblings, and their godsister off the table where Shilo had set it down after looking at it earlier. "Come on, kid," he said, "let's go watch that movie, shall we?"

* * *

**Okay, so...the book Shilo talks about is actually a real book that I have, I've read it like three times, it's fantastic, uh...the reason for all the roach stuff is because I have a headcanon that, like Zdunich, Graves has a thing for the little mo'fos (I can so easily picture him in Zdunich's Cockroach Hall of Fame t-shirt), um...I seriously did go online and look shit up about roaches and drug withdrawals to help write this...what else?...The thing at the beginning that Shilo went through was supposed to be like she went into shock once the adrenaline finally wore off, and it resulted in a major panic attack. I did NOT have to look anything up for that, because I have had more than my fair share of panic attacks throughout my seventeen years of life, including ones far more severe than the one Shilo had in this chapter. So all of that was written through personal experience, most of the things that happened to her are things that I've experienced during my own panic attacks. So, yeah.**

**And those of you who want to, don't worry, you'll get to meet both Jem and Nick sooner or later, I just haven't figured out when they'll make their entrance(s) yet. :)**

**OH! That reminds me! Young Graverobber in the picture! I run a Grilo ask/RP blog on tumblr, and when I need to have pictures of Young!Graverobber for whatever reason on that blog, the FC I use is Gus Drake, so if you want to know what Graves looked like in the picture he showed to Shilo, go look up Gus Drake. And Nick in the picture is Jackson Rado, and Jem, the godsister, is Tamara Lazic. I'll tell you who my FCs for Grown Up Nick and Jem are once we get to the chapter(s) where they're introduced.**

**Anyway, yeah, that's about it for now, so...hope you're enjoying this so far, and please review, be sure to tell me what you like about it, what you don't like, all that good stuff so I know what I'm doing right and what I need to improve on. :)**


	3. Chapter 3

**Okay, so after mentioning them both in the last chapter, I just had to bring Nick and Jem in as soon as possible, so here they are, along with Jem's cousin! On the Tumblr blog, I use Thomas McDonnell for Nicky, and—you ready?—for Jem, I use none other than Jessica Lowndes! Why? BECAUSE I CAN, BITCH, THAT'S WHY, HAHA! Besides, she's just so damn beautiful, I can't not use her for one of my characters, and when I created Jem, she seemed as good as any, and since it sort of connects Repo! and TDC just that much more for me, I figured, why not? Anyway...Zena doesn't have a faceclaim for several reasons, so just...picture her the old-fashioned way, lol. :P**

**As always I own nothing. Except Jem. And Nicky. AAAAAAnd Zena, I own Zena! Other than that, I own nothing.**

* * *

When Shilo woke up the next morning, she decided that she was going to need some clothes of her own, because as comfortable as they were, the ones Graverobber had gotten for her during her panic attack or whatever it had been were much too big for her small frame, and she was pretty sure they were his, anyway, and that he'd want them back at some point. So the way she saw it, her best option was to go back to her own house and gather up some things from her bedroom, including at least a few days' worth of clothes. Besides, she'd left her bug book there, and of all the things she owned, if there was a fire and she had to pick only five things to save, that book would be on the list. Hell, it'd probably be Number One on that list.

First thing was first, though; get some breakfast.

She half-expected Graverobber to already be downstairs, but he wasn't, and then she realized that with as much time as he seemed to spend running around at night, it made sense that he would be a late sleeper. _God, _she thought as she opened the fridge, _I don't even know what I should call him anymore. Soon as he gets down here, I've gotta ask if I can use his name now. _She didn't have to wait as long as she was expecting she would, because just as she was reaching to see what was under some tinfoil, there was a sudden shout. Shilo let out a shriek of surprise, jerking upright as she let go of the fridge door, allowing it to slam shut, both her hands reflexively going into the surrender position. She stared with wide eyes at Graverobber, who was standing in the kitchen doorway wearing nothing but a pair of faded jeans with the zipper open, his hair falling partway into his face as he pointed a gun at her.

"Would you put that thing away?!" Shilo said finally. Graverobber let out a heavy exhalation of breath, his arms falling to his sides as his head went back so that his face was towards the ceiling. "Jesus Christ, kid!" he said. "Don't scare me like that, I thought you were a burglar or something! I'm not used to having anyone in my house besides Nick, you can't just...God, you know what, forget it. What the hell are you doing in here, anyway?"

"Getting breakfast."  
"What? What time is it?"  
"I dunno, like...seven-thirty?"  
"Morning or night?"  
"Weird question, but morning."

He sighed, did something with the gun (hopefully turn the damn safety on), and then dropped it on the table, pushing his hair out of his face. "I'm only asking because I'm not usually very active during the day. I'm mostly nocturnal. When you're wanted by the GeneCops, darkness can be a valuable friend. It hides you. I had to adapt in a lot of ways when I ended up by myself, and then I had to adapt again when I started doing what I do. I'd be dead right now if it weren't for some of those adaptations. So I work at night, take care of most of whatever else I need to take care of, then come home, eat something, then head upstairs and crash, then spend the day sleeping. I'll go out and do stuff during the day sometimes, but for the most part, my life is lived at night. Listen, speaking of getting stuff done and all that, I have to go over and help Jem move some shit, you wanna come with?"

"Seriously? Last night you wouldn't even tell me your brother's name, now you're okay with me meeting your godsister? Why the sudden change?"  
"I realized you were right with what you said about there not really being anybody for you to tell. You're a good kid, I trust you not to go blabbing to anyone."  
"I...Thanks. That actually means a lot to me. By the way, what should I call you? I mean, should I just keep calling you Graverobber, or am I allowed to use your name now?"  
"I, uh...Yeah, sure. I guess you can use my name. I mean, no point in you not since you know it now. But not around anyone except Jem and Nick, and don't use my first name, got it?"

"I can do that. I can totally do both of those."  
"Good. Alright, now that we have that established, go get dressed and we'll head over to Jem's."

"I...I can't."  
"Why not?"

"I only have the dress I wore last night at the Opera. All my other clothes are at home."  
Graverobber—Allan—studied her for a moment or so. "I might have some of my sister's old clothes you can wear," he said finally. "You look like you're about the same size she was when she was...fourteen-ish, I guess. God, you're such a tiny little thing, you know that?"

"I used to complain about being so small, but Dad said it was the medicine. I guess he meant that it stunted my growth."  
"Mmm...Well, just hang on a few minutes, and I'll see if I can go dig something up, then we'll stop by your place later so you can get your own clothes, alright?"

Shilo nodded, and he turned, grabbing the gun on his way out of the kitchen. He made a pitstop in his bedroom to put the gun down on his dresser, then turned and went down the hall, heading away from the bathroom where Shilo's panic attack had started the previous night. He went all the way down to the end of the hall, opened the door there, then went up the stairs hiding behind that door, and when he got to the top, he flipped on the lightswitch, and the attic flooded with light.

"Okay," he muttered, "Nattie's old clothes. Right."

It took him longer than he thought it would, but after about twenty-five minutes, a stubbed toe, an unknown number of boxes, and multiple swear words to vent frustration, he finally managed to scrounge together a pair of jeans, a gray sweater, and a jacket, the latter two both with a sort of post-apocalyptic sort of look to them, which actually made perfect sense, because Natalie had, at one point, gone through a phase where she'd been really into that sort of style. Something about liking the grunge look or some shit like that.

He found Shilo in the guest room, sitting on the bed just sort of staring at nothing in particular. "Here you go, kid," he said, tossing the clothes to her. Her head jerked in his direction just in time to catch them. "They might be a little big on you, but I think it'll be alright."

"Thanks," she said. He put a hand up as if to say "no problem" as he turned away, closing the door on his way out to give her some privacy, then heading to his own room to put on what he referred to as his "civilian attire." When the Graverobber wanted to go somewhere without being recognized, he wore jeans and a t-shirt, usually with a hoodie, and he hid his distinctive hair by tying it up into a tight little knot at the base of his skull and hiding it under a classic style beanie. Sometimes a little of it would escape, but not enough to give him away, and he always made sure to fix it before too much managed to get out. This time, instead of wearing his hoodie, he just put on a long sleeve shirt underneath his t-shirt.

After he'd shoved his feet into his worn out combat boots and laced them up, he went downstairs and grabbed two bags of beef jerky from the pantry, tossing one to Shilo when she came down. "That's breakfast," he said, "we'll eat on the way, let's go. Oh, one more thing before I forget. I know I said earlier not to call me by name around other people, but that's only when I'm wearing my get-up. Dressed like this, though, I don't want anyone to know who I am, so it's cool."

Shilo nodded. "Got it. Anything else?"  
"If a psychotic chick with pink hair comes up to us, don't panic, it's just Dixie. I'd be dead if it weren't for her, she taught me how to be a graverobber and fend for myself. And, uh...that's it, I'm done. C'mon, let's get going."

* * *

"Yo, bro! Been too long!"  
"It's been like two weeks, dumbass," Graverobber said. He'd led Shilo to a neighborhood on the outskirts of the city, near the harbor, then into a small four-story apartment building, up to the third floor, down to the end of the hall, and knocked on the door there, which had opened to reveal a man with dark brown eyes and brown hair that went to about his shoulders. Now, that man whacked Graverobber on the shoulder and rolled his eyes. "What," he said, "a man can't miss his baby brother?"

"Don't call me that."  
"Who's your girlfriend?"  
"She's not my girlfriend."  
"Yeah, sure, whatever, man."

"Shilo, this is my stupid half-brother Nick. Nicky, this is Shilo. She is _just _a friend, you understand me? I don't wanna hear any of your bullshit and teasing, we clear on that?"  
"What the hell is going on out here, Nick, why are you just standing in the door like a—Oh, hey, Terrance, I was wondering when you'd get here!"

Graverobber grit his teeth, his eyes rolling into the back of his head. "Don't. Call. Me. That," he said through his teeth. The girl who had shown up behind Nick only smirked in amusement. She was really pretty, Shilo thought. She had these beautiful brown eyes and brown hair pulled into a ponytail, and when the smirk got replaced by a smile, she only became that much prettier. "Kid, meet my godsister," Graverobber said. "Jemima here is the only person on the face of the planet to still call me by my first name, and she does it with the sole intent of pissing me off. It works, too. It works really. Fucking. Well. I have all but resorted to virgin sacrifice to make her stop."

"In your dreams, Ter," Jem said. "Anyway, who's your little friend?"  
"Her name's Shilo. Weren't either of you dipshits watching TV last night?"  
"Nope," Jem replied as she pulled Nick out of the doorway to let Graverobber and Shilo into the apartment. "I had to work and Nick was passed out in bed before I even left. And you're a dipshit, dipshit."

"Bitch," he said.  
"Jerk," she countered.  
"NICK!" Nick shouted, and Graverobber smacked him upside the head.

"You see this, kid?" he asked. "You see what I have to put up with? Day in and day out, it's just constant idiocy from him and nagging from her, I can't catch a fucking break!"  
"You guys are crazy, you know that?" Shilo said.  
"So we've been told," Jem replied casually.

She clapped her hands together. "Alright, boys!" she said. "Let's get going, shall we? That furniture ain't gonna move itself, y'know!"  
"Alright, what exactly are we doing here?" Graverobber asked, taking off his beanie and shoving it into his back pocket, then releasing his hair from its knot. Jem pointed towards the doorway behind herself. "You know that armchair in the bedroom? First thing we gotta do is get that puppy out here, then we'll go from there. Come on, you two, move, get those lazy asses in gear!"

"What the hell are you gonna do?" Nick demanded, putting both hands on his hips. Jem smiled at him sweetly. "Oh, that's easy, honey, I'm your supervisor," she replied innocently. "Shilo, you wanna help me with that extremely arduous task?"

"Do it, kid," Graverobber said. "You aren't made for heavy lifting."  
"I'll say," Nick commented. "I mean, look at her, she's like fifteen years old."  
"I'm seventeen, thank you very much," Shilo protested. "I'm just...short, that's all."  
"Nah, kid, there's no such thing as short, you're fun-sized is what you are."

"Oh, Terrance. Ever the optimist, aren't you?" Jem said, her tone half-sarcastic. "Hey, has he ever told you about the time I kicked his ass doing Shakespeare?"  
"Um, no, actually, he hasn't. What's the story there?"  
"God, you _had _to bring that up!" Graverobber shouted from in the bedroom.

"Get moving, Terrance!" Jem called back, then turned her attention to Shilo. "Okay, so one time, I managed to talk him into doing a scene from _As You Like It _with me, the one like right towards the beginning where Orlando and Oliver get into a fight, and I convinced him to be Oliver while I was Orlando, and so we get past the argument and into the actual fight, and I went to tackle him, and he went straight down, like I didn't even have to try. I felt bad for him afterwards. I mean, the way he landed, a lot of the impact ended up getting absorbed by his kneecap, so he was kind of limping around for a while after it happened. Ooh, hey, I like your necklace, that's pretty."

"Thanks," Shilo said, touching the cameo. "It was my mom's. First piece of jewelry I ever owned. Probably'll be the last, too."  
Jem held up her right hand, flexing her ring finger slightly to show off the ring she was wearing. It was so small and delicate that Shilo hadn't even noticed it before, and it had the same sort of beauty to it that Jem had. It was a thin gold band with a small pink rose, a leaf carved into the gold on either side of the flower. "This ring was my aunt's," she said. "My grandmother gave it to her, and she gave it to me. If I ever have a daughter, I'm going to give it to her one day."

"Jemima!"  
Both girls turned. The boys were standing in the bedroom doorway lifting an armchair between them, Graverobber in front and Nick in back, the latter with a bit more strain on his face than the former. "Where should we put this thing?" Nick asked. Jem looked around, then pointed over to the corner by the window, not far from the couch. "Over there is fine for now," she said. Graverobber exhaled as they set the chair down, then readjusted their grip on it, and when he counted to three, they lifted it back up and started making their way towards the corner Jem had indicated. "Is...Is Zena coming over today?" Graverobber asked. Jem's expression grew thoughtful as she grabbed an apple from a bowl on the counter, going around into the kitchen to wash it off in the sink. She bit her lower lip, drying the apple off.

"I think so," she said, then took a bite of her apple.  
"Who's Zena?" Shilo asked.

"My cousin," Jem told her. "Zena's short for Zenadiya, which is not her real name. She's a drag queen, her given name is James. Oh...you've never met a drag queen before, have you, sweetie? No, I can tell by the look on your face. Okay, rule of thumb when it comes to Zena about the whole male-versus-female pronoun thing? She's got these breast-forms that she made herself, and when she's got those on, use female pronouns. If her chest is flat, use male pronouns. It seriously is that easy when it comes to her. It'll be different for each drag queen, it depends on their personal preference, but that's just the best way to go with Zena."

"Does she always go by Zena?"  
"No, she goes by Jay when she's a guy."

"Kid," Graverobber said, pulling his hair back into a ponytail, "I know the idea's a little intimidating, especially for someone who's never met a drag queen before, but believe me, Zena is just like everyone else in this room. She's just as messed up in her own way, and she's every bit as friendly as Jem, if not more. She's just...more of a drama queen, that's all. She's part of the family." There was a buzzing sound that seemed like it was coming from under some magazines sitting on the coffee table. Jem went over and moved those magazines aside, then picked up the cell phone underneath, which Shilo was rather surprised to see since she hadn't been aware that anyone still used cells instead of the wristcoms.

"We're the only ones that use them as far as we're aware," Graverobber said, as if he could read her thoughts. "We all have wristcoms, but the cell phones are what we have for communication exclusively with each other, especially in emergency situations. All three of us have one, and so does Zena."

"Speaking of whom," Jem said, "that was her texting me just now. She's a couple blocks away, so she'll be here soon."  
"Please tell me she's in enough of a guy mood today that she'll help us with moving your shit," Nick said.  
Jem shrugged. "Dunno, she didn't say," she replied. "Alright, um...Next, I need you to...Here, I'll just make a list for you guys."

When he heard the word "list," Graverobber reached into his back pocket, pulled the beanie out, shoved it into the other one, then reached into the first pocket again and whipped out a folded paper, not seeming to care in the least that it made loud rustling noises as he unfolded it while Nick watched him with a confused expression. "Allan?" the latter said. "Whatchya got there, man?" Graverobber didn't respond, instead just looking over the paper for a moment or so while Jem found a legal pad and started writing down what she needed the boys to do. "You have girl-crushes on Winona Rider and Molly Ringwald," he said suddenly, and Shilo's head turned in his direction.

"That's true," she told him. "I think Winona a little more than Molly, but yeah, that's true. Go."  
Graverobber grabbed a pen that was sitting on the coffee table, using it to cross off the item from the list. "Uh...I can recite Mercutio's entire Queen Mab speech from memory," he said. Shilo pulled the list he'd given her out of her jacket pocket and went over to him, holding her hand out wordlessly. He gave her the pen, and she found what he'd just told her, then crossed it off. Nick looked back and forth between them as they both put the lists back in their pockets for the time being. "What the hell was that about?" he asked. Graverobber shrugged.

"Little game we came up with last night to help us get to know each other better. We haven't known each other that long, to tell the truth," he said.

The door flew open suddenly and a tall girl dressed in a long flowing skirt and a zipped up leather jacket came in, skirt flaring out wildly as she whirled around and slammed the door with a dramatic flair that Shilo thought was rather unnecessary, then whirled back around again to slump up against the door, her bangs hanging down in her face as she closed her eyes and let out a short, exasperated sounding breath. "The world really is ending, Jemima," she said. Her voice was husky and a little raspy, and when she took her jacket off and tossed it onto the couch, Shilo was able to see that she had a lean build. Her nails were short, but well-manicured, and she had long fingers. Her auburn hair fell to about her shoulderblades, and it was curled into soft ringlets, though Shilo was pretty sure they had been done with a curling iron rather than being natural. Beneath the leather jacket was a t-shirt that was a little loose on her narrow shoulders.

"It's _ending, _Jem!" the girl repeated, leaning heavily on the kitchen counter from the living room side of it. Jem looked up from writing down the list, glancing briefly at the other girl before turning her attention back to the legal pad. "What are you on about now, Zena?" she asked. Shilo looked a little more closely at the newcomer and saw that she was, indeed, actually a he. It was easy to tell when you looked closely enough at the shape of the jaw, and she supposed that also explained the huskiness of the voice.  
"You mean you don't _know?!" _Zena demanded in what seemed to be shock. "Blind Mag!"

Shilo tensed, darting a glance in Graverobber's direction.

"What about her?" Jem asked somewhat indifferently.  
"God, don't you ever pay _any_ attention?! She's dead!"

Jem's pen clattered onto the counter as her head snapped up, eyes wide. Nick inhaled sharply, his eyes also doubling in size. "She's _what?" _Jem said, clearly shocked by the news. Zena nodded. "She and Rotti both. Last night at the Opera. Weren't you watching?"  
"No, I couldn't, I had to work. My God, what happened?"

"There was a fence as part of the set, wrought iron. Mag was suspended in the air, and—I don't know, the cords must've snapped or something, because she fell and—God, Jemima, all the blood! And there was—a girl. She was...I don't know, she was—"

Zena cut off suddenly as she noticed Shilo, who had unconsciously made her way to stand beside Graverobber, relieved by the feeling of his hand coming to rest on her shoulder and giving a gentle squeeze as if to reassure her that everything was alright. But now, with Zena looking at her the way she was, the previous feeling of unease returned. "What, Zena?" Nick prompted. "She was what?" But Zena didn't answer. Instead, she slowly turned to fully face Shilo, the look in her eyes making the seventeen-year-old wish that she could vanish into herself. _Where's a Goddamn sinkhole when you need one? _she thought somewhat bitterly.

"Who is she?" Zena asked in a shaky voice.  
Jem followed her cousin's gaze. "That's Terrance's friend Shilo," she said. "Zenadiya, I don't understand, what—"  
"No," Zena interrupted. "No, you obviously don't understand. That's her. That's the girl from the Opera last night, the one who—"

Shilo didn't stick around to hear the rest.

She turned and bolted for the front door, yanking it open and racing down the hall towards the stairs, only vaguely aware of Graverobber's voice behind her, raised in irritation mixed with something else she couldn't place, though she didn't bother listening to any of the words. She made it down all three flights of stairs and out the door of the building, then, without thinking, turned and fled down the street.

Back in the apartment, Graverobber was in the middle of giving Zena the what-for when he realized suddenly that if Shilo ran off on her own, it would only be a matter of time until she ended up getting lost. It was inevitable. She didn't know the streets of the city like he did. His own words from the night before came back to him; _You're a good kid. You don't deserve to be left on the streets just because you don't have anywhere you can go or anybody to look out for you._

That was when it really hit him that he truly was all she had in the world.

_'Tis not death, but the manner of it that is important, _he recited to himself as he began running down the street in the direction he thought Shilo had gone, left to rely on the pull of his instincts in order to find her. She was a good kid. She deserved to live past seventeen, to die in a more dignified manner than on the streets. He knew that was a right that he had perhaps lost long ago, but not Shilo. She was still too innocent for that. He silently cursed Zena and her big mouth. Everything had been fine until she showed up and started yammering on about how the world was coming to an end and all that other shit. Dammit. He had to focus.

_Think, Zatovich! _he said to himself. _Come on, think! If I was a seventeen-year-old girl and I was in her position, where would I go? The old lighthouse?_  
Probably not, he reasoned. It didn't really seem like her kind of place, but he couldn't come up with anything else, so he figured it was as good a place as any to start. He ran out of the neighborhood and down to the harbor, making his way towards the rocks that eventually gave way to a stretch of beach, the path then leading up a flight of stairs to what was better classified as a sort of overhang than a cliff, at the top of which sat an old forgotten lighthouse with crumbling walls. That was his goal. Before he reached it, however, he saw something that made him stop short. On one of the rocks that was closer to the edge of the shore, where the waves crashed against the boulders, there stood a lone figure, repeatedly throwing something out into the water.

"What the hell is her problem?!" Shilo said as he picked his way across the rocks towards her. The objects she was throwing proved to be pebbles and other stones that could be held in the palm of a human hand. "I didn't do jack shit to her, she didn't even bother to learn my name before she started—You're a fucking liar, you know that? You said she was nice, but that wasn't nice, that was—that was—" She broke off into a wordless shout, sending a handful of stones into the waves all at once. For several moments, they just stood there together on the rocks, staring out at the ocean, and Graverobber found himself wondering about his sister; where she'd gone, what she was doing now, if she was happy, if she ever thought about him and Nick...

"What did you mean last night," Shilo said, breaking him out of his thoughts, "when you said I was in danger? Danger of what? From who?"  
"From Amber and those psychotic brothers of hers," he said. "Isn't it obvious, kid? Don't you realize what they'll want out of you now? To make you do?"  
"No. No, it's not obvious, so since you apparently know everything, why don't you enlighten me, _Graverobber?" _She made a point of using his alias rather than his real name, though for what reason, she didn't really know. If she had to guess, she'd say it was maybe something to do with the hope that even though they were only just getting to know each other, it would sting him to some degree that she'd chosen to call him something so impersonal when she had his full permission to do otherwise. She knew it was probably as useless as it was stupid, though. Why should he care whether she used his name or not when he hardly ever used hers and was always just calling her kid?

"Rotti's will, kid," Graverobber said. "It's all about the will, don't you see? He was going to leave his entire estate to you, but you turned it down. Any one of those three nutjobs he called his kids could take over now, sure, but will it actually belong to whichever one of them does? Absolutely not, no. None of them can legally take possession of their dad's company unless and until you sign it over to them, otherwise it'll just be like they're running things in your stead, at least as far as the law is concerned. And if they don't own it legally..." He shrugged. "Might as well not own it at all. You see what I'm saying here?"

"You're saying I own a company that I don't even want."  
"Essentially, yeah."  
"Well that's just fucking great. You know, part of me wishes I'd just listened to my dad and stayed in my damn room, then maybe I wouldn't be in this mess."  
"'Liberty is most attractive to those who do not know its price,'" Graverobber quoted, reciting it from memory. Shilo looked at him in what seemed to be surprise. "That's really good, where'd you hear it?" she asked. He shook his head. "I can't say, it'll spoil part of my list," he said simply. Almost without thinking, she pulled it out of her pocket and began scanning it.

"...You were raised on Aesop?"

There was a long pause where he didn't respond, just stood there staring out at the horizon with his hands in his pockets and his hair blowing in the wind, his blue eyes seeming to lock onto something that rested at the edge of the horizon, something visible only to him. "My favorite is the story about the Scorpion and the Frog," he said finally. "You know it?" Shilo slowly shook her head. There was another pause, his eyes still resting on that invisible object. "Once," he said, "a Scorpion and a Frog met on the bank of a river. The Scorpion asked the Frog to carry him across, and the Frog asked, 'How do I know you won't sting me?' The Scorpion replied, 'Because if I do, we shall both die.' Satisfied with this, the Frog allows the Scorpion to climb onto its back. Halfway across the river, though, the Frog feels a prick, and knows it has been stung. Just as the paralysis begins to set in, it gasps out, 'Why?' And just before they sink completely, the Scorpion replies, 'It is my nature.'"

"It was a bad idea for me to come with you," Shilo said quietly, shaking her head. "I'm starting to feel like absolute shit, and...God...my head."  
"Shilo," Graverobber said as something began to dawn on him. "How long has it been since you last had a dose of your medicine?"

She shook her head. "I don't...I don't know, a while? Feel my palms," she said suddenly, turning and thrusting her hands at him. After he recovered from his brief surprise, he took her hands in his, only to find that her palms were slick with sweat. He looked at her warily. "How bad is your headache?" he asked.  
"Increasingly worse by the minute," she said bluntly.

_Shit._

He grabbed her by the wrist, half-dragging and half-guiding her back over the rocks to solid ground. "I think the withdrawals are starting," he said. "We've gotta get you back to Jem's, there's no time to go all the way back to my place."

"You're gonna take care of me?"  
"I'm gonna take care of you."  
"You promise?"  
"I promise."

* * *

They could hear the shouting from the second landing.

Shilo couldn't really make out what it was that was going on, but apparently, Graverobber could, because as they hurried the rest of the way back up to Jem's apartment, he told her over his shoulder that it sounded to him like Jem was pissed off at Zena for what had happened earlier, and so the two of them had gotten into an argument, and Nick was trying to break it up, but failing miserably and was at a loss of what he should do.

"Get her out of here!" Zena shouted when Graverobber came stumbling through the door, half-dragging Shilo by the wrist behind himself.  
"Shut the fuck up, James!" Graverobber countered. "All of you, shut the fuck up and listen to me! This girl's blood has been getting drugged for the past seventeen years and she's about to start going through her first round of withdrawals, you understand me?! She's already working up a fever, look at her, she's already starting to shiver, and her palms are sweaty as hell, her head's already killing her! God dammit, James, _look _at her, she's already on the verge of collapsing, there's no time for me to get her back to my place, what part of that is so difficult for you to understand?! For Christ's sake, she's only a kid, she—"

Shilo's knees gave out from under her suddenly, and she stumbled forward, clutching at the fabric of Graverobber's shirt as his arms instinctively shot out to catch her. Jem took one look at the scene in front of her, read the look in her godbrother's eyes, then grabbed her cousin by the elbow. "If you're not going to help, then stay out of the way," she said, pushing Zena over to the side, then helping Graverobber get Shilo over to the couch so she could lay down. "Blankets, we need blankets," he said. Jem nodded, disappearing into the bedroom to get as many blankets as she could find. She could hear him talking in a low voice to Shilo, probably trying to keep her from going into a panic, and she heard Nick ask if there was anything he could do, then head towards the bathroom when he was told to go get a damp washcloth.

Everyone in Jem's family had their talents; hers were acting and martial arts, Nick's were spread across a range of different things, Zena's mostly involved being sassy in some way, and Terrance, well...Combined with the eccentricities that had always been present in him, his time on the streets had given him knowledge and skill in an even wider variety of subjects than Nick. Being older, Jem had always felt a sense of protection over her godbrother, and while it was that sense of protection that usually made her feel guilty and upset over the fact that his knowledge included things like drug withdrawals, right now, she was grateful for it. If it weren't for him, Jem wouldn't know how to help this other girl, and her nature demanded that she did, in some way, help.

She took the blankets back into the living room, standing off to the side and holding them while she watched the scene in front of her with fascination. It was odd, seeing Terrance act this way. It was like she was seeing a whole new side of him. She was surprised to see that Shilo was bald, what was evidently her wig now sitting on the coffee table. Terrance was sitting on the edge of the couch with her face between his hands, looking her directly in the eyes, his gaze steady, voice low and soothing.

"You're gonna be alright," he was saying. "I said I'd take care of you, didn't I? I meant that, okay, I'm a man of my word." He held one hand out towards Nick, who stepped forward, gave him the damp washcloth in his hand, then stepped back to stand beside Jem, both of them watching as Terrance pressed the washcloth against Shilo's forehead. "You're working up a fever," he explained, "so your body's gotta sweat it off. Like I told you before—sweating, shaking, nausea, vomiting, possible hallucinations, seizures, maybe even both."

"Dear God above, I hope there's no seizures," Nick muttered, his voice sounding somewhat strangled, and Jem knew he must be remembering when his adopted mother had died, that it was a seizure that had caused the blunt force head trauma in the first place. She didn't blame him for not wanting to relive that. She wouldn't, either, if she were him. Summer Zatovich had been the second mother that Nick had lost. As if losing his birth mother hadn't been bad enough.

"You're both idiots for helping her," Zena hissed.  
"If you don't like it, then leave," Jem retorted through clenched teeth, her brown eyes huge.  
"Call me when you have some sense, _cousin," _Zena replied, and then, snatching up her jacket, she was gone in a flurry of skirts and curls, slamming the front door behind herself on the way out.

As Jem was in the process of helping get Shilo covered up with the blankets, the latter of the two girls bolted into an upright sitting position suddenly. "Oh, God," she choked out. "I think I'm gonna—" Nick snatched up a nearby trashcan, quickly passing it to Jem, who got it under Shilo's face just in time as she retched into it. "Someone go get her some water," Terrance ordered, and Jem turned, heading straight for the kitchen and pulling a glass down from a cabinet, quickly filling it with water from the sink and taking it back.

"Is she going to be alright?" Jem asked quietly.  
"She'll be fine. I've seen worse. Trust me."

* * *

**Anyone who caught the Supernatural reference in there gets points and a free cookie! Um...yeah...so...please review? I've gotten like 30-something views on this story, but no feedback, so I'm both encouraged and nervous at the same time. I don't know if those people who've seen this are enjoying it or not, so if you are, please tell me, otherwise I get discouraged and think nobody's enjoying this. :/**


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